Out of Hand Sick Delicious Corn Chowder

You know that saying, Party in the Mouth? Welcome to the corn crammed, summer infused, super creamy awesome division of PITM central.

It's vegan, which makes it even better. And it has delicious cashew puree in it, like (srsly) half the stuff I've made over the last month. I'm really lucky I'm not allergic to that most delicate of tree nut. Who knows, tho - I keep eating 'em at this rate and I might be soon! When I fall in love, I fall hard.

You guys know the drill - you want to creamify a soup without dumping 1k worth of butterfat calories in the pot, you have several options:

Immersion blender - make sure your potato content is high for this technique
1 block silken tofu
Almond/Soy/Rice Milk

Done them all, multiple times in triplicate - and I wanted something new.

Of course, there was a huge pile of cashew puree waiting to become cheeze sitting in the fridge. And so, the creamiest chowder I've ever made vegan-style came about.

Pay close attention to the multiple blender steps for maximum smoothness!

Cream of Corn Chowder
makes 1 medium pot - or 4-6 bowls.

1 bag frozen corn OR 6 ears worth of freshly-boiled corn
4 tbl EarthBalance
1/2 red pepper
1/2 green pepper
1/2 poblano pepper
2 fresh jalapenos, minced
4 small white potatoes, diced medium-small (peels on for vitamin content!!)
1 red onion, chopped
10 cloves garlic, minced
2 ribs celery, diced
1 small calabaza squash or zucchini, triangled (halved, then sliced lengthwise into three triangle-shaped strips, then chopped)
4 small carrots, diced
6 cups vegetable or faux-chicken stock
1 cup cashew butter (or cheese a la this recipe - adding cashew cheese will lend a more sour-cream flavor - regular pureed cashews, just a sweet, nutty note)
1.5 tsp black pepper, freshly ground
Dash agave

To serve:

1 fresh tomato, diced fine
Minced cilantro and scallion
Chipotle hot sauce, to taste


Right. So.

Melt your EB in a large soup pot. Add  your onion, carrot, celery, peppers including jalapeno, and garlic. Saute over medium heat for 5-6 minutes, until onions are translucent.

Add your squash and potatoes. Add your corn now, if using fresh - hold off till the end, if using frozen. Cook 4 minutes or so, until squash has softened just a bit.

Add your stock and a little water if need to just reach the top of your veggies. Add pepper and agave. Cover and simmer 20 minutes, until potatoes are soft at center.

Grab your blender. With a ladle, spoon off as much liquid as possible from the soup. No biggie if you get some veggies in there - you're going to puree some of them next! Add your cashew butter, making sure the total volume in your blender does not exceed your maximum line. Blend for 6-8 minutes, adding a teeny bit of water if needed, until the soup is super super smooth. Pour back into the pot.

Now, ladle more of the soup back into your blender, paying careful attention to getting as many potatoes as possible (leave a few tho, yum!). Puree again until super smooth. Add the puree back to the pot. Taste for salt and adjust as needed.

If you're using frozen corn, add it to the stew now, and heat until cooked through.

Ladle, garnish, and serve! Perfect with toasty french bread and a simple salad with lemon dressing.

Bon Appetite!

Good Luck Brekkie

Remember how I said, long ago, that brunch was my favorite meal of the day?

It still kinda is, but we've been trying to eat fewer eggs lately. I dunno why. Just have been.

And with this meal, eggs are optional. Not needed, but one crispy-fried on top of the bean pile makes for a lovely little detail. Since the rest of the meal is vegan, this is an easy one to convert - so please do.

This began as a meal for a client and turned into dinner for us as well - the next night. Brekkie for dinnie is a big deal around here, but with a crunchy piece of chicken-fried tofu on top, this little ditty will transition seamlessly to nighttime. It's even awesome by its lonesome, as the leftovers I ate for lunch can attest to.

There's a little foraging-magic in my batch, thanks to a favorite springtime heralder - Onion Grass.

Very closely related to Chives, I use this stuff all the time. Our lawn's never been treated with any chemical, so I don't stress. Not quite as aromatic as chives and a little tougher, I tend to use this grass in stews, instead of raw. In the summer, once the lawn is cut, you can smell onion for hours. Hilarious.

Hoppin' John, as ya'll know, is an inexpensive dish - black eyed or crowder peas, a ham hock, an herb or two, spoon over white rice, finito. I fancied this up a bit since I can't help myself. If you're looking for a more basic version, the Tubes have many, many recipes for you to peruse.

Good Luck Brekkie (aka - Veggie Hoppin' John over Soysage Fried Rice with a Fried Egg on Top)

makes 2-3 servings

For the beans:

12 ozs fresh or frozen black eyed peas - look in your store's frozen veggie section
2 tablespoons olive oil
Handful mushrooms, chopped
1 medium white onion, diced
1/2 red pepper, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
Chives or onion grass, handful, chopped
Thyme, dried, 1/2 tablespoon
Ton of black pepper
4 cups vegetable stock or water (if using water - add salt to taste)
Smoked salt, 1 tsp
Dash sesame oil
Pinch cayenne

Heat your oil in a medium soup pot. Add carrot, onion, pepper, and celery. Saute until onion starts to turn translucent - about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, herbs fresh and dried. Saute another 3 minutes. Pour in your stock or water, and add remaining ingredients, including beans.

Bring to a boil then lower heat to medium-low - simmer, stirring frequently, for an hour, until beans have softened and some have broken down, making a killer potlicker.

Meanwhile, the rice:

2 cups day-old rice, brown or white, cooked, chilled (the key to fluffy fried rice - chilling it!)
3 soy sausage patties or a 1/2 fist sized chunk of seitan, diced small
3 scallions, chopped
1 tablespoons sesame oil + 1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup mushroom or faux-chicken broth, warmed

Heat your oil in a wok over medium-high heat and add sausage - cook until browned on a side or two, about 6-7 minutes. Add scallions, rice, and toss, mixing well. Add stock and quickly stir rice continually, until all stock has been absorbed. Cover and set aside.

If you're preparing another protein to accompany your John, go right ahead. If not, serve your stew atop a spoonful of fried rice. Garnish with parsley and if you're super-hungry, eat with boiled cabbage and sliced tomatoes.

Your gramma'd be so proud!

Decadent Broccoli Cheese Chowder

I loved Broccoli and Cheese so much that as a kid, I dressed up as it for Halloween. I'm serious.

Over the years my passion has mellowed a bit, but I'm still the one nibbling at the last couple of florets on Fondue Night and I just about lost it when I found out Gramma had made Broccoli Cheese Casserole (in all its mayonnaise-drenched, condensed soup goodness) for Christmas Dinner. Yeah, I ate some of what I cooked - but at least as much BCC went down the hatch.

Since I cook for a couple of gluten-free women, I wanted to try different thickeners, instead of flour - cornstarch seemed an obvious choice, but maybe I could minimize the starch by using goat cheese and extra potato?

Yes I can, and did, and I gotta say - best B+C Chowder ever made by Moi.

Broccoli Cheese Chowder

1 small head brocolli
2 medium yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced largishly (my pieces were all about 1/2 inch wide)
1 small onion
2 carrots
2 stalks celery
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 scallions, minced
Small handful parsley, minced
1 cup milk or cream
2 tablespoons butter
4 ozs fresh goat cheese
A rather large amount of freshly grated black pepper
Salt to taste
6 cups vegetable stock or water and boullion equivalent
3/4 pound sharp cheddar cheese, grated, tossed with 1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp lemon juice
Scallions, shredded cheddar, hot sauce or Jalapeno Oil to garnish (recipe for Jalapeno Oil at page bottom!)

Let's do this.

Melt your butter in a medium stock pot and add onion, celery, carrot, garlic. Over medium high heat, stir veggies every 2 minutes while keeping pot covered until they soften, about 6 minutes. Covering the pot in between stirs helps to steam the veggies, thus quickening their cooking time.

Add your brocc, stir, cover once more and cook 2 minutes, until it has turned bright green. Add stock, potatoes, scallions, parsley, pepper, mustard and lemon juice, and simmer soup for 10-12 minutes, until potatoes are very soft. Remove from heat.

Use an immersion blender to carefully blend your soup to the desired consistency - I went for pretty well-blended with some large chunks for kicks. Return to the heat and add your cream, cheddar, and goat cheese. Stir well and let it all melt and blend. Taste for salt and add, if needed.

Sprinkle any remaining cheddar over the top along with parsley or scallions, and serve. If you want a little heat, try the Jalapeno Oil described below. Nom.

Jalapeno Oil

1 large jalapeno
1/2 cup flavorful olive oil
Parsley, scallions, garlic, whatever herb strikes your fancy

Put it all in a blender and whizzzzzz until everything's emulsified. Strain through cheesecloth or a fine-mesh sieve. Serve.

Tofu n' Dumplings

'Tis the season for carbs and cream, aka Comfort Food.

Chicken and Dumplings is one of those meals I never really had as a kid - we reverted to mac and cheese and lasagna for the (few) nights cool enough to enjoy such things (in S. Fla, the temperature, even in winter, rarely drops below 50). So veggie-fying them now, and taking them to gluten-free land is pretty amusing to me. I imagine, like most loving cooks, my recipe will evolve gradually until it perfects itself, and I'll make it that way for the rest of the rest. Since this is the first permutation, tho, there's room for exploration. And if you have a recipe or tip you'd like to share, I'd love to hear it.

The one problem I imagined going into this for my GF clients was the weight of the dumplings. GF flours tend toward the beany, weighty side - and even with the addition of egg, I didn't have confidence in them to "cloud up" appropriately. In fact, the first version I made had that very issue, so for version 2, I took a couple extra steps, and they turned out much lighter. ALMOST fluffy. Yum.

Tofu and Gluten Free Herb Dumplings
dumplings adapted from this recipe, thanks HTTG!

For the dumplings:

2 c GF multi-purpose flour mix

1 t baking soda

1/4 t xanthan gum

1.5 t salt

1 c buttermilk (or soymilk, regular milk, or even water)

4 T butter

2 eggs

1 tablespoon each minced parsley and chives

Several grinds fresh black pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

Heat the buttermilk in a small saucepan and add the butter. Beat the eggs until frothy and add to the milk mixture. In a medium bowl, mix your dry ingredients and herbs thoroughly. As you stir with a SPOON, slowly add your wet mixture to the dry and mix until just incorporated. The more you mix, the tougher the dumplings.

The dough will be very sticky. You can spoon dolops of dough into your stew when ready or, if you want more uniform shapes, shape them with wet hands and drop them in one at a time.

For the stew:

1 block firm tofu, torn into bite-sized chunks

1/2 cup vegetable oil, to fry

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup buttermilk or cream

2 ribs celery, diced

2 carrots, peeled, diced

1 cup frozen peas

1 tablespoon freshly minced parsley

1 tablespoon chives, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 cubes vegetarian "Chicken" broth mixed with 4 cups water OR:

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

3 tablespoons Tamari

Tons of freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Dash sesame oil (about a tsp) 

3.5 cups water

Simmer the tofu in your broth for a few minutes then strain, keeping broth. Heat about an inch of oil in a skillet and shallow-fry until golden on all sides. Drain on paper towels.

Melt the butter in a small dutch oven. Add celery, carrot, and garlic and saute until celery is translucent and carrots have lost some crunch. Add broth, herbs, pepper, peas, cream, and tofu, and check for salt. Add if necessary.

Bring stew to a simmer and add your dumplings, spacing them out to "cover" the stew. Cover the pot and simmer for 10-12 minutes, until the dumplings are super-puffy and done in the middle (check with a knife or bamboo skewer, it'll come out dry).

This recipe makes for a thinner stew than some care for. I use corn starch as rarely as I possibly can, so I didn't add any to thicken. Super-tasty and nutritious, this. Enjoy!

Grits, Greens, and Mushroom, fancy-schmancy-ized.

Just gonna put this out there - this ranks in my top 5 meals, for taste and texture. Come with me, I show you secrets.

Yes, I have a lightbox. Yes, I like it. It cost 10 bucks in materials to construct - here's a how-to.

So if you remember the farmer's market porn I put up last weekend, you'll remember the behemoth mushroom I claimed mugged me. Last night it finally got eaten, atop some crispy, awesome grit cakes and a muscadine gravy. Good stuff. Bright but woodsy, textures ranging from silken (gravy) to meaty (mushroom) to crunchy (cakes). This is by far the most successful grit cake recipe I've ever attempted - and no wonder, sine it comes from the Anson Mills recipe page (heretofor referred to as the Grit Mafia). I'm going to break it all down. Here we go!

Goat Cheese Grit Cakes
altered from the Anson Mills recipe
makes 6 large or 8 medium cakes

1 cup quick-cooking white grits, washed twice (to remove the bran and increase creaminess)
1 small round smoked goat cheese (you can use regular goat cheese if you must, but if you can get your hands on a smoked cheese, dooo eeeeet)
3 cups good quality vegetable stock, plus a little water as needed
6 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup flour, for dredging

Cook your grits in a small pot. Just put the broth and grits in there and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for about half an hour.

Line a 10 x 6 inch baking pan with parchment paper.

When grits are smooth and creamy (aka, "done") pour them into your baking pan. Smooth with a spatula or spoon and put them in the freezer for 30 minutes, until they're cooled and firm to the touch.

Grab a circular cookie cutter. Mine measures about 2.5 inches in diameter. Cut your 6 circles and remove them to a plate.

Heat half the butter in a heavy iron skillet until frothy. Take the pan off the heat and skim the froth from the butter with a spoon and discard. Return pan to heat, heat to medium-high.

In a shallow container, spread your flour. Press each cake into the flour and flip, pressing the other side as well. Gently shake extra flour off, and place in the skillet. Do only two at a time, so you can keep track of their delicious browning process.

Cook for 5-6 minutes a side - seriously - until a brown crust has formed on each. Remove to a baking sheet and keep warm in a 250f oven as you finish the rest.

*A note on clarifying your butter - Don't skip this step! The crunchy crust held up to saucing and the liquid from the mushrooms perfectly, and if I had to guess (which I do) I'd attribute that to the milk solids being removed first, preventing them from "melting" into the flour, almost like a cheese would do. Thus, you get crunchy, rather than chewy.

Quick Seared, then Braised, Chicken Mushroom

Hand sized chunk of Chicken Mushroom, sliced into 4-5 pieces
1/2 good quality vegetable stock
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon minced garlic
Fresh black pepper to taste

When I bought this sick-delish chunk of 'shroom, the glowing seller gave me some advice on preparing it: "I like a high-heat sear with butter and salt.". So while this incorporates one additional step, it starts with a sear.

But first, some science photos:

How awesome is that little planty. A closer look:

Make sure to carefully clean any cool planty inclusions before proceding. Also make sure to notice how amazing your future dinner is.

Melt your butter in your iron skillet over high heat. Add your mushrooms and toss with the butter. Press down and let sizzle, 2 minutes on each side, until some char has formed.


Add your stock and garlic and immediately cover your pan. Turn the heat to medium and let the mushrooms steam a bit, to cook all the way through. If you need to add a little more liquid, make it water, and go through the process again, until the mushroom is slightly translucent all the way through. The whole process should take less than 8 minutes.


Green Muscadine Gravy

Muscadines have a super-distinctive, tart, sweet taste, so I wanted to "water that down" a bit without losing any color. Using some green beans, green pepper, green zebra tomatoes and chives (all from either my garden, my nabe's garden, or ze market), I kept that olive-y look while keeping the flavors savory. Worked wonderfully (if I do say so myself) with the smokiness of the goat cheese. Like a fruited tomato sauce. Onward!

10 large muscadine grapes, hulled and seeded, sliced in half
Handful fresh green beans, cleaned and trimmed, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 small green pepper, seeded, chopped
1 large green tomato, chopped
1 tablespoon honey
Good splash bourbon or muscadine wine
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup good quality vegetable stock
Salt to taste

Melt your butter in a dutch oven or saucepan. Add onions, peppers, green beans, and saute over medium heat until softened (about 8 minutes). Deglaze with the bourbon (or wine) and saute a bit more, until alcohol has evaporated.

Add your tomato and grapes, saute for another 4 minutes, until they start falling apart. Add stock, honey, mix well, remove from heat.

Throw it all in a blender and puree for a couple of minutes. Strain it through a fine mesh sieve, pressing on solids. Rinse your dutch oven and return sauce to pan. Taste and add salt as needed to balance the flavor right on the cusp of sweetness/savory. Tada!

Put it all together! You'll need some freshly minced chives.

Ladle a spoonful or two of gravy into the middle of your plate, pushing toward the edges with the back of the ladle. Place two grit cakes in the center of the plate, and half your braised mushrooms on top of those. Sprinkle chives around the cakes, using whatever long pieces remain as a "sprout" from your mushrooms. Eat. Quickly.

Weekend Nosh

We've been trying to make a tradition out of grilling something, at someone's house, every Sunday this summer. Praying to the Church of Charcoal, if you will. I had a bag of Vadouvan spices staring at me from the shelf, so "tandoori" kebabs were on the menu.

It's kinda misleading to use the word Tandoori in describing these, since a Tandoor is a type of clay oven, and obviously these were getting charred over a pile of briquettes. Although not an impossible stretch since tandoors typically use charcoal as a heat source. But anyway.

The previously mentioned Stuart had played Garden Produce Fairy again and graced us with about 2 pounds of green tomatoes. Those needed to get eaten, so we had some fried green 'maters too, using a secret technique whose how-to I'd pried out of a friendly waitress at the Penguin some weeks back (who shall remain names, lest she lose her job). Bad news for my vegan CLT homies: the fried pickles are NOT vegan.

And then we had this delicious lucky pot:

Bean salad, courtesy of MT. Kid has this uncanny knack for making the mundane surprising - his pasta salad, which I've since tried to replicate, holds a sweet memory in my foodbrain. The kicker here was pickled green beans. Awesome.

Onto the recipes!


Tandoori Kebabs

As with any kebab, use a mix of your favorite veggies, remembering that the marinade will stick best to wrinkly things (cauliflower and broccoli, ungilled mushrooms, scored zucchini).

Makes 15 skewers.

1 pound mushrooms
1/2 head cauliflower
1 block tofu, frozen, defrosted, squeezed to drain
2 bell peppers
2 medium squash or eggplant

2 cups yogurt
1/4 cup vadouvan or Tandoori spice mix (for a make-it-yourself mix, see here, can't go wrong with eCurry)
Dash sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Salt, 1 tablespoon

Mix your marinade and taste. You want a little heat, a fair amount of salt, and a bit of sweet. Add more sugar, red pepper, and salt until it tastes balanced and strong.

In several large plastic bags, separate your veggies. Pour a third of the mixture into each bag, seal well, and squish, gently, to coat your veggies. Put the bags aside at room temperature and let marinate for at least 3 hours (we went to 5 on ours).

As your briquettes are briquette-ing, skewer a piece of each of your veggies on either bamboo or metal skewers, starting and ending with a hearty vegetable (like cauliflower or squash, saving your tofu and peppers for the middle). Careful! The marinade makes things slippery. I punched a couple of tiny holes in my thumb with the sharp end. D'oh. 

As soon as you see mostly gray on your charcoal, it's time to grill. Highest heat possible is ideal. If you have concerns about the tofu sticking (which it likes to do) wipe your grill down with olive oil ahead of time. Put your kebabs on and close the grill, letting them cook for 2-3 minutes per side. Keeping the grill covered helps to steam the veggies, so they cook all the way through. Using tongs or a spatula, flip the kebabs, and cook about 3 minutes. Edges should be charred, colors bright.

Serve with a tamarind chutney (recipe below) or another sweet dipping sauce. Yum.

Tamarind dipping sauce:

1/2 cup tamarind puree
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tsp Sriracha (hey, nobody said this was authentic!)
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt to taste

Mix it all together and heat, either in a non-reactive pan or the microwave, until warm enough to melt the sugar. Taste and adjust salt. Chill.

Fried green tomatoes

I have an irrational desire to capitalize the letters of green and tomatoes. Thanks a lot, Jessica Tandy.

The secret is soaking the freshly sliced 'maters in, basically, Ranch Dressing for a good hour before coating/frying. Buttermilk base, little mayo, herbs and salt (my recipe is here).

1 cup ranch dressing

5 medium or 10 small green tomatoes

1/2 cup fine white cornmeal
1/2 all purpose flour
Dash each: cayenne pepper, black pepper, onion and garlic powder
1 tablespoon freshly minced chives

Vegetable oil, for frying

After your tomatoes have soaked in their ranch batch for a good hour, mix your flours, powders and chives in a large plate pan or plate.

Heat your oil in an iron skillet to medium-high.

As you fry, you're going to lose cornmeal to the oil. Since you'll be doing 4-5 batches, every batch or two, wipe the cornmeal out of you skillet and replace the oil. Otherwise, you'll end up with very burnt taste tomatoes and a kitchen full of smoke.

Shake a little dressing off your tomato round and plunge it into the flour. Press gently to coat one side, then flip and press again. I like to let the tomato sit there until I have a panful ready to fry - so you can cook them all at once.

Gently place each tomato into the oil and fry until golden on one side, about 2 minutes. Do not move the tomato, as you'll loose your crust, if you do. Carefully flip by getting all the way under the tomato with your spatula, scraping the crust off the pan if needed. Fry the other side another 2 minutes. Drain on paper towels.

Serve with more Ranch, for dipping. Mmmmm.

Ode to Dish

In these here parts, being veg can be rough. (But hey - it's improving, daily, it sometimes seems.) The ubiquitous veggie plate is often ze only option whilst dining with meater pals, and even then, you need to ask about every side to insure you ain't scarfing no fatback or lard. Yeah.

But at Dish, mi favrito diner-ish restaurant, it's all veg (the sides, that is). So you can get awesome combos going - straight up southern (grits, collards, mac n cheese), faux-healthy (salad, green beans, black eyed peas), warm n' comfy (creamy soup, squash casserole, mashed 'taters). + biscuit + deviled egg. Yeah. Possibilities are profuse. Secret tip - that Del Sur burrito is ultimately scarfable if you sub mac 'n cheese or regular mashed potatoes for their overspiced/too-sweet yams. Try it on a night they aren't hoppin'!

What I'm saying is, the veg plate is this common offering to the veggie crowd below the mason-dixon line. I wanted to try my hand. And take preeety picturez, of course. Since I'm unable to scarf Le Macaroni Fromage sans hot sauce (Tabasco, to be specific) and there was none in the house, I made some homemade faux-Tabasco hot sauce. Recipe below!

Mac N' Cheese

Everyone's got their super secret awesome version. A pal of mine, I just recently discovered, simmers his milk pre-bechemal with a couple of bay leaves. My secret weapons - too much butter, tiny bit o nutmeg, and lots of whole-grain mustard. And, of course, the best cheddar you can get your mitts on.

12 oz pasta (macaroni, pennete, shells)
1 pound cheddar, shredded (used an old raw milk white in this version)
5 tablespoons butter, plus 1 melted to coat dish, plus ANOTHER melted to toss with breadcrumbs
3 tablespoons white flour
1.5 tablespoons whole grain mustard
1.5 cups milk/cream (half milk half cream, used here)
Salt and a dash of white pepper
1 tsp nutmeg, or 4 strokes across the rasper, fresh
1 egg, beaten
1 garlic clove, whole
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs 

Start the water boiling. When it looks to blow in about 5 minutes, melt your butter in a large saucepan. Add your garlic clove and swirl, frying  for about a minute.

Check water for boil - add pasta.

Butter your baking dish. This recipe will happily fill a deep dish 6x6 inch corningware. 

Remove garlic clove, toss the flour in, grab a whisk. Cook roux until it has goldened a bit, about 3 minutes. While whisking, gently pour your milk/cream in. Cook over a low heat until the sauce has thickened, about 5 minutes.

Grab a wooden spoon while preheating your oven to 400f.

Add mustard, add nutmeg, stir. Add cheese, up heat to medium, stir, gently, until cheese has melted. At this point, your pasta should be cooked. Drain and pour into buttered baking dish. Salt and pepper sauce to taste, and pour over your pasta. Stir to incorporate. Add your beaten egg, stir again. Toss your breadcrumbs with a tablespoon of melted butter, using your fingers to mix. Scatter evenly over the top. Bake 20 minutes, or until the top is nice and bubbly. Broil another 3-5, or until crumbs are a bit browned.

Stewed Pole Beans

Thanks to my awesome neighbor Stu for inspiring this dish - by handing me a 2 pound bag o' beans from his garden! Yeah!

1 large tomato, chopped
1.5-2 pounds green beans, cleaned and ends trimmed
1 large onion, sliced into rings, then in half again
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons olive oil
Lots of freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon veggie bouillion (I used the jarred kind - a small cube would work fine)
2 cups water

Oil in a pot, add garlic and onion, turn heat to high. Char them a bit, continuously stirring, for about 2 minutes. Add the beans, tomatoes, water, pepper, and bouillion, turn heat to low, and simmer for an hour, covered. You may need to add a tad more water as the simmering progresses - add just enough to keep things from sticking to the pot.

Rip-off Tabasco Hot Sauce

I used one cayenne pepper, one tabasco pepper, and 3 red jalapenos for the recipe below. Ideally, you'd use all tabascos (flavor deviance is nil, to my tounge, but what do I know).

4-5 medium tabasco peppers, or an assortment of red jalapenos/cayennes
1/2 cup cider vinegar
2 tablespoons salt
1 tsp brown sugar
Smidge horseradish (optional)
2 cloves garlic

If you want less heat, you know the drill - open up the peppers and seed them. I left them in :)

Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend for 3-4 minutes, until bits have almost disappeared. Strain mixture over a bowl, pressing on solids. Keep the solids! They're delicious in scrambled eggs. OR put them in a small jar and cover with good quality olive oil - you'll have chili oil in no time.

In a non-reactive pot, simmer sauce for about 6 minutes, until it has reduced by 1/4. Put in in a jar in the fridge to chill. Makes about 1/2 cup.